does the universe expand faster than light

Does the universe expand faster than light how to#
Does the universe expand faster than light full#

But when physicists tried to calculate how much energy this would give empty space, the answer came out wrong - wrong by a lot.

Does the universe expand faster than light full#

In this theory, 'empty space' is actually full of temporary ('virtual') particles that continually form and then disappear. The result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter.Īnother explanation for how space acquires energy comes from the quantum theory of matter. This image shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be called 'normal' matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the universe. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe's expansion. Theorists still don't know what the correct explanation is, but they have given the solution a name. Maybe there is something wrong with Einstein's theory of gravity and a new theory could include some kind of field that creates this cosmic acceleration. Maybe it was a result of a long-discarded version of Einstein's theory of gravity, one that contained what was called a 'cosmological constant.' Maybe there was some strange kind of energy-fluid that filled space. But something was causing it.Įventually theorists came up with three sorts of explanations.

Does the universe expand faster than light how to#

No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. So the expansion of the universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. The universe is full of matter and the attractive force of gravity pulls all matter together. Granted, the slowing had not been observed, but, theoretically, the universe had to slow. It might have enough energy density to stop its expansion and recollapse, it might have so little energy density that it would never stop expanding, but gravity was certain to slow the expansion as time went on. PS Pics from NASA, and Flash in the pan comes from the days of Muskets.In the early 1990s, one thing was fairly certain about the expansion of the universe. It doesn’t get the attention of Hubble, but arguably it is more important. I was going to talk a bit about the Chandra X-Ray Telescope. We cannot see much beyond it, but there is likely a whole lot there. So what Hubble saw was a glimpse of the edge of time. Watch the Berkeley Astronomy lectures I wrote about in a previous post. So the Universe may be billions of times bigger than 13,700 million light years in every direction. The balloon can inflate faster than this.ĭon’t yell at me! I am just telling you what the Astronomers say! The light traveling between the universe dots can only go at light speed. As the balloon is blown up the galaxies (dots) all start separating. Again, this is not a violation of relativity. The speed of the expansion, is also INCREASING, and it may pass the speed of light as well. Eventually, every object will be too far from every other object, to be seen. The Universe is still expanding, and according to the current theories, it will likely keep on expanding forever. (This does NOT violate relativity, according to Cosmologist Alex Filipenko of U.C.

This would mean an expansion, faster than the speed of light. The current thinking, is that at the time of the Big Bang, (13,700 million years ago) the Universe underwent INFLATION. It’s purpose was to save me having to write sheepishly back to an Astronomer and say “Well yes I did know that…)ĭoesn’t mean there isn’t something far, far beyond, our “visible universe” though. WE CANNOT SEE ANYTHING FURTHER THAN 13,700 MILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY! (Actually because space itself is expanding we can see about 45,000 million light years but this gets complicated. It will take one trillion years for it to get here.īUT THE UNIVERSE IS ONLY 13,700 MILLION YEARS OLD!!

The light from this sun is headed toward us at the speed of light. Say there is a star, one trillion light years away from Earth. So if I make a mistake, I WILL HEAR ABOUT IT! …and learn something new too!ġ3,700 Million years. A friend down the street works on Chandra (More on that in a moment). I live in Huntsville Alabama, and Marshall Space Flight Center is nearby. If I get this wrong a local Astronomer will correct me. Astronomers and Cosmologist now think that our Universe is so big as to be incomprehensible.